Fun At The Library

I visited my local public library today and found out just how comfortable some people are looking at porn.

I was in a computer room, when I happened to look behind me and saw a man on the opposite wall, looking at all kinds of porn. There were about seven other people in the room, including teenage girls.

Now each computer had a screen draped in front of the monitor that made viewing from anywhere but directly in front of it difficult. So people couldn't directly see what he was looking at except if they were in front of the monitor, or across the room and directly behind it, as I was.

A librarian even came into the room to help someone beside the man print something. Before this, the young girl beside the man asked him if he knew how to print something from the computer. He calmly told her how and went back to his voyeristic viewing in the middle of the afternoon in the library.

I never thought someone would be bold enough or desperate enough to have to go to a library to look at porn. But, then again, maybe I overestimated everyone's carnal nature.

Too bad libraries have become battle grounds for freedom of expression and ways for the ACLU to fight for the ability to look at pornography next to teenage girls.

Love, BaSin City Style

After slightly recovering for a few days after viewing the life and times of criminals and prostitutes from Basin City at my local movie theater, I can almost find some redeemable quality to it(besides the style and panache of director Robert Roderiguez).

One story line has a guy named Marv (Mickey Rourke with lots of prostheses) somehow being redeemed by a night with a lady of the night named Goldie. While they're both sleeping, a cannibalistic Frodo kills Goldie mysteriously, leaving Marv to deal with cops who think he killed her.

So anyway, Marv evades the cops and then tracks the spectacled Elijah Wood down by questioning other people and killing them in grand, bloody, Flannery O'Conner-like ways. He then finds Kevin (Elijah Wood) and lets the culprit experience a different form of cannibalism to complete the cycle of revenge.

So somewhere in there is something redeemable? Sort of. Marv seemed to have felt redeemed by that night with Goldie. His criminal past and violence were assuaged and his soul was somehow redeemed, or so he tells the audience. He valued that love so much he was willing to kill again and again and again. And then again and again and yet again.

So love is the highest cause or worth fighting for? Or love is what can redeem us? I don't know. That little bit seemed to be something to help me justify seeing one of the nastiest movies yet to date.